After Mass. tax break, TJX moves unit to Ohio

Retailer got $21m in aid to add Mass. jobs

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TJX Cos., the Framingham owner of T.J. Maxx and Marshall’s, which last year negotiated about $21 million in tax breaks to add jobs in Massachusetts, has moved its data center to Ohio after receiving economic incentives to build a technology facility in New Albany.

The off-price retailer said it expected to create 28 new jobs at the data center in Ohio, according to the 2010 annual financial report from the Village of New Albany.

TJX, which several years ago suffered a massive consumer data breach that compromised as many as 100 million customer accounts, would not say how many positions it transferred out of Massachusetts.

“TJX moved its data center in order to expand capabilities to support our growth as we continue to be a huge net job creator in the Commonwealth and worldwide,” said Sherry Lang, a TJX spokeswoman. “Of the less than 20 associates in the data center, some were relocated, some were retrained, and some were given [severance] packages.”

The company on Tuesday had three job openings listed for New Albany on its corporate website.

TJX, which rang up $25.9 billion in sales in 2012, received a host of state and local incentives to move the data operation to the Midwest, including a seven-year, 55 percent job-creation tax credit valued at up to $175,893 and grants totaling $210,000, said Katie Sabatino, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Development Services Agency.

The roughly $80 million technology facility is in a business park that has attracted data centers for Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. and American Electrical Power Co., according to reports in Ohio.

Even as TJX has shown impressive revenue gains in recent years, it has found ways to lower its cost of doing business in Massachusetts, where it employed more than 12,000 people in 2012.

Last year, the state’s Economic Assistance Coordinating Council approved about $21 million in state and local tax breaks for TJX, which pledged to create 300 jobs and invest $264 million to expand in Framingham and Marlborough, where it has purchased buildings vacated by Fidelity Investments.